Mistaken identity: French plane entered Swedish air space – not Russian as reported

The Swedish military has confirmed a “Russian” aircraft that entered Swedish airspace on Saturday was actually French. The Expressen newspaper had falsely reported a Russian plane was "a couple of kilometers on the wrong side of the border.”

The military plane
actually turned out to be from France and Jesper Tengroth, a
press officer for the Swedish military said they are now going to
investigate what the plane was actually doing there. Speaking to
The Local news website, he was unable to give
any further details about the French aircraft and added the
Expressen publication would,“have to take responsibility for
their sources.”

The French Embassy in Stockholm says they are currently
investigating the air violation. “I do not have any
information right now. We are in contact with Paris to understand
what is happening,” said Lionel Fabre, who is the embassy’s
press officer, as reported by Expressen.

However, Janzen made no mention of the mix-up on his Twitter
page, preferring to continue condemning Moscow for testing
Europe’s air defenses.

The claims about a possible Russian violation of Swedish airspace
came just a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin had
appeared on German television to say that his country had not
violated international airspace.

"Our exercises exclusively take place in international waters
and international airspace," he told the German broadcaster
ARD.

Russia does send military patrols towards other nations, but the
aircraft are instructed to stay in international airspace. NATO
usually scrambles its fighter jets to shadow Russian planes, just
as Russia does when NATO warplanes are spotted close to Russian
borders.

Reports of Russian incursions into national airspace regularly
appear in the media, but they are often not officially confirmed
or are disproved later.

Even Washington – which doesn't typically hesitate to accuse
Russia of wrongdoing with little to no evidence – says Moscow
complies with international law when flying close to American
borders. The US can only say that it doesn't see “the
security environment as warranting international activity,”
in the words of State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki.

The false allegations of a Russian plane entering Swedish
airspace come just weeks after Stockholm believed a Russian
submarine had strayed into Swedish waters, not far from the
country’s capital.

#Sweden air
space was actually violated by French not a Russian plane. Hey,
the flag is hard to tell if you're not sure which way is up.

Reports of a Russian
distress signal and a grainy-picture were enough to deploy the
navy, while the media concluded the vessel had to be a Russian
submarine spooking the Scandinavian country. The whole operation
set Sweden back to the tune of $2.8 million.

However, the Swedish
newspaper Dagens Nyheter, cited a Swedish Intel source who
confessed there was no distress call.

Citing freedom of information requests and its own sources, the
paper said Sweden’s signal intelligence agency knows nothing
about the alleged distress calls, and registered no spikes in
communication with Kaliningrad at the time.

“I’d be glad to read about that emergency call myself. But it
didn’t happen, this information is incorrect,” the newspaper
cites a source as saying.